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[KikkyMonk]

I brought a 10 point cook and a 10 point brewer with me and very quickly racked up a large reserve of food. Then the Cook died and now I have three novice cooks but they are not producing near enough for my ~100 dwarf fort. They have began hunting vermin  

I have 2 good sized plots and about 7 farmers farming plump helmets but its not really enough to keep up.

Is everything lost?

Dave

[prklts]

In addition to what you're already doing, you might want to put two or three dwarves on fishing, with someone available to fish clean. Herbalism is also good, because you can turn the forever-spawning shrubs outside into food. (Of course herbalism takes time from your kitchen too.)

Build another kitchen if you need to do so. What's the harm, really? You can always dismantle it if things stablize.

Stick this thing out to the bitter end. You can always reclaim it or visit it in adventure mode, so losing is fun too. Good luck, and let us know how it goes!  

[Toady One]

They don't recover well after they start vermin hunting right now, in part due to a bug.  Are there bushes outside on your map?  You could try gathering if the farms aren't fast enough.

[TotalPigeon]

How much food/booze do you actually have? We can help you better if you give us numbers

[KikkyMonk]

I have a couple on bush duty picking inside my rather large underground forest. I switched all fisherdwarfs to farmers because it was more consistant. I am out of everything except seeds, really. My farm is outputting nicely but winter is fast approaching.

I guess my population will fall to what my output can support. I just hope the few really important dwarfs don't die.

Well there is always next time. I learned alot playing through this time.

[KikkyMonk]

Ahhhh, they are dropping like flies!

(Loosing IS fun!)

[prklts]

Right now, while you have the underground river active during the winter, you could fish instead of farm. You also might accidentally find a few more shrubs outside during winter.

Since it's bad, you should maybe start slaughtering animals.  

[KikkyMonk]

All non-pets are slaughtered. Immigration is a bitch I get swarmed by 20 or so dwarfs at a time. Oh well, now they starve!

[CharonX]

I always employ the "locked door" policy when the locus... er immigrants arrive. A couple of them are turned soldiers and secretely ushered into a side entrance/airlock, the rest gets to starve etc.

Hey, I didn't ask them to come, they can leave if they want.

[Trae]

I have enough fisherdwarves (all but one are migrants) that my single fish cleaner is kept busy even through winter.

[Fieari]

Huh.  Even one fisherdwarf, in my experience, quickly empties the rivers of food before the season is out.

Hopefully herbalism will keep your dwarves alive long enough for your cooks to learn sufficiently.  The problem is, unskilled herbalists gather less food than skilled ones.  Proficient and higher herbalists can get multiple berries/grasses/whatever from a single plant, while novice ones might require multiple plants to get a single herb.  Skill really matters here.

[ April 22, 2007: Message edited by: Fieari ]

[hactar1]

One thing that really helped me is changing the cook/brew settings (in the Z menu under Kitchen) so that my raw plants are never directly cooked.  This means they are reserved for the brewery, which means you get 5 drinks (and subsequently 5 food items after cooking the drinks) for every one plant that would have been cooked.  Cooking plants also destroys the seeds.  Even if your brewery is going full steam ahead, the kitchen won't prioritize the efficient alcohol meals over the inefficient plants.